Mothers. We wouldn't be here without them. Sometimes they can be the most wonderful people in the world. Other times, not so much.
My mother was not a kind woman. At
least not to her children. My older siblings always tell me that they
had it worse than me. My youngest older sibling (I have three older
and one younger) is nine years older than me. They say my mother was
worse when they were growing up. I have no basis for comparison. I
wasn't around then.
But my mother was bad enough when I was
growing up. She always belittled me, hit me over the tiniest
provocation, and kept me isolated so no one would know what she was
doing. Growing up I thought this was normal and sought my escape in
books and writing, two pastimes she allowed me because she herself
was a reader and a writer. It kept me from asking questions and
allowed me to escape from her. So I dug myself deep into the writings
of her favorite authors and expanded from there thanks to school
libraries.
There were books I brought home that my
mother insisted on reading first. She would force me to take them
back, unread, because they were “inappropriate” in her eyes. As I
got older, she stopped reading what I brought home and I found all
sorts of things she didn't want me to know about. I learned about
same sex pairings reading Mercedes Lackey. I found out about sex
scenes reading some romance author I no longer remember the name of.
This didn't mean the abuse stopped. But
it gave me an escape. I tried moving out on my own when I was twenty.
I was back home within a year. My mother's controlling ways and
constant verbal and emotional abuse continued. I left home at twenty
two. I went to Job Corps. It was there I found out that what my
mother did wasn't normal and that I could have a life of my own where
she didn't control me.
I moved in with Himself's family for a
while before we went out and got our own place. A part of me still
expected the kind of abuse I got from my mother and I would cringe
every time Himself got angry at me. I wanted to get past it but my
mother's legacy still haunted me. I took Himself home with me for
Christmas one year and was completely shocked by how civil my mother
was to the both of us.
Then Himself and I had our break in
September 2001. We lived in Washington. I took the Greyhound home and
got into Boise at 2 AM. My dad picked me up and I was back at my
parents' house at 2:30. I expected mom to be in bed, was expecting to
be raged at and belittled for my poor choice in a boyfriend.
Instead my mom was up in her green
nightgown with the old red shawl I remember so well wrapped around
her shoulders. She saw me and opened up her arms. I started sobbing
and was enveloped in arms and a shawl. She took me to a couch and
told me he was the one who'd lost a treasure, how it was obvious he
didn't know what I was worth. Everything I'd come to expect from her
was turned completely around. We talked until 7 AM when I finally
fell asleep on the couch. That was 9/11 so you can imagine I didn't
get much sleep but my mother was there.
The last two years of her life were
like a dream for me. Here, this woman I saw, I talked to, I lived
with for a brief period until I got married, she was the mother I'd
wanted all my life. I learned my mother was bipolar and was finally
diagnosed and getting treatment.
I lost my mother two years after I came
home from Washington to cancer. She went from diagnosis to death in
three weeks. I railed against it for a long time, crying about how
she'd been taken from me just when I was getting to know the real
person behind the mental illness. Then I realized that I was thankful
for those two years. And I still am.
